Fact #56476
When:
Short story:
Peter Schwenkow is born in Hamburg, Germany, Europe. He will become a concert promoter and subsequently will form DEAG, one of the world's first massive corporate music entertainment companies.Full article:
PETER SCHWENKOW : A PROFILE BY JOHNNY BLACK, first published in Audience magazine, 2013
"If I had to choose somebody to be stranded with on a desert island," says Berlin-based Hermjo Klein, CEO of the A.C.T. Artists Agency, "it would be Peter Schwenkow." The veteran show producer pauses briefly, chuckles to himself, then adds, "Or maybe Ozzy Osbourne."
Klein has been in the business for fifty years, so it speaks volumes that a man who has worked with Duke Ellington, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin would find a fellow music business mogul the most entertaining company he could imagine to be stranded with alone. Except maybe Ozzy.
Another interviewee (I'll spare his blushes and omit his name) for this profile of Germany's top events promoter, said he would happily marry Schwenkow, "if he wasn't already married to a wonderful woman."
So there's no denying that Peter Schwenkow engenders extreme loyalty among many of those who work with him, but who, exactly, is he?
The short answer is that he's the founder and boss of DEAG (Deutsche Entertainment AG), the multi-faceted, many-tentacled entertainment empire which sells 4m tickets every year for the more-than 4,000 shows it promotes in Germany, the UK, Austria and Switzerland.
"I play two roles," he explains to Audience. "On the one hand, yes, I am the CEO of a huge international company. On the other, I work as a promoter on my own little projects, because I like to remain close to artists and to the market."
By "little projects" he's referring to acts that include, "Our German Bruce Springsteen, Peter Maffay, who just finished a 54-show tour with 360,000 visitors. And we had 300,000 with the violinist David Garrett, who I discovered."
Schwenkow's "little projects", he admits, "sell around 1.5m of the 4m we sell annually."
It's a state of affairs he relishes because, "As long as my segments are more profitable than those of my colleagues, everybody will listen to my advice."
Nobody stays on top of a vast international conglomerate without being highly competitive, and Schwenkow is certainly no exception to that rule. He needs to be that way, because DEAG, which he founded in 1995, is an umbrella company under which he directs and/or oversees the activities of promoter DEAG Concerts, record label DEAG Classics, and music publisher DEAG Music.
And let's not forget Concert Concept. Founded on 15 June 1978, this was Schwenkow's first promoting company, and the foundation on which DEAG has been built. Currently celebrating its 35th anniversary, its MD is now Moritz Schwenkow, one of Peter's five offspring.
Nor does it stop there. Schwenkow also has interests in numerous subsidiaries and affiliates. There's a network of local German promoters, including the aforementioned A.C.T., along with Global Concerts, River Concerts, Manfred Hertlein Veranstaltungs, KBK Konzert and the recently-acquired Handwerker Promotions. There's a family entertainment arm, Grandezza Entertainment, which operates the acclaimed Circus FlicFlac. There's venue management with Franfurt's Jahrhunderthalle, and a newly-established line in venue research consulting via the Berlin-based Verescon.
Detlef Kornett, Verescon's CEO, details some of this new venture's activities, saying, "As partner in our joint business, we have worked on a major football stadium in Switzerland, multifunctional arenas in Austria, in the planning process of a brand new conference and convention centre and providing operating advice for theatres and arenas in Europe."
Outside of Germany, the UK's long-established Raymond Gubbay Ltd is 100% DEAG-owned, and the hand of Schwenkow can be detected in Switzerland's classical events organiser The Classical Company and promoter Good News Productions.
If Schwenkow is beginning to sound like some business-obsessed captain of industry with no time for anything other than empire-building, it's worth remembering that this a man who once, in the face of impending bad weather, performed a rain dance onstage at a Placido Domingo concert in Berlin's Waldb
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"If I had to choose somebody to be stranded with on a desert island," says Berlin-based Hermjo Klein, CEO of the A.C.T. Artists Agency, "it would be Peter Schwenkow." The veteran show producer pauses briefly, chuckles to himself, then adds, "Or maybe Ozzy Osbourne."
Klein has been in the business for fifty years, so it speaks volumes that a man who has worked with Duke Ellington, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin would find a fellow music business mogul the most entertaining company he could imagine to be stranded with alone. Except maybe Ozzy.
Another interviewee (I'll spare his blushes and omit his name) for this profile of Germany's top events promoter, said he would happily marry Schwenkow, "if he wasn't already married to a wonderful woman."
So there's no denying that Peter Schwenkow engenders extreme loyalty among many of those who work with him, but who, exactly, is he?
The short answer is that he's the founder and boss of DEAG (Deutsche Entertainment AG), the multi-faceted, many-tentacled entertainment empire which sells 4m tickets every year for the more-than 4,000 shows it promotes in Germany, the UK, Austria and Switzerland.
"I play two roles," he explains to Audience. "On the one hand, yes, I am the CEO of a huge international company. On the other, I work as a promoter on my own little projects, because I like to remain close to artists and to the market."
By "little projects" he's referring to acts that include, "Our German Bruce Springsteen, Peter Maffay, who just finished a 54-show tour with 360,000 visitors. And we had 300,000 with the violinist David Garrett, who I discovered."
Schwenkow's "little projects", he admits, "sell around 1.5m of the 4m we sell annually."
It's a state of affairs he relishes because, "As long as my segments are more profitable than those of my colleagues, everybody will listen to my advice."
Nobody stays on top of a vast international conglomerate without being highly competitive, and Schwenkow is certainly no exception to that rule. He needs to be that way, because DEAG, which he founded in 1995, is an umbrella company under which he directs and/or oversees the activities of promoter DEAG Concerts, record label DEAG Classics, and music publisher DEAG Music.
And let's not forget Concert Concept. Founded on 15 June 1978, this was Schwenkow's first promoting company, and the foundation on which DEAG has been built. Currently celebrating its 35th anniversary, its MD is now Moritz Schwenkow, one of Peter's five offspring.
Nor does it stop there. Schwenkow also has interests in numerous subsidiaries and affiliates. There's a network of local German promoters, including the aforementioned A.C.T., along with Global Concerts, River Concerts, Manfred Hertlein Veranstaltungs, KBK Konzert and the recently-acquired Handwerker Promotions. There's a family entertainment arm, Grandezza Entertainment, which operates the acclaimed Circus FlicFlac. There's venue management with Franfurt's Jahrhunderthalle, and a newly-established line in venue research consulting via the Berlin-based Verescon.
Detlef Kornett, Verescon's CEO, details some of this new venture's activities, saying, "As partner in our joint business, we have worked on a major football stadium in Switzerland, multifunctional arenas in Austria, in the planning process of a brand new conference and convention centre and providing operating advice for theatres and arenas in Europe."
Outside of Germany, the UK's long-established Raymond Gubbay Ltd is 100% DEAG-owned, and the hand of Schwenkow can be detected in Switzerland's classical events organiser The Classical Company and promoter Good News Productions.
If Schwenkow is beginning to sound like some business-obsessed captain of industry with no time for anything other than empire-building, it's worth remembering that this a man who once, in the face of impending bad weather, performed a rain dance onstage at a Placido Domingo concert in Berlin's Waldb